SOS Gurashi
by Racke
Summary: The zombie-apocalypse can be mighty boring, once you get used to it.


XXX

 **Story** : [SOS Gurashi]  
 **Summary** : The zombie-apocalypse can be mighty boring, once you get used to it.  
 **Crossover** : (Haruhi Suzumiya) / (Gakkou Gurashi)  
 **Genre** : Humor, Drama, Friendship, Romance?

XXX

It's weird sometimes how people refuse to think about certain things. They know that they're real issues, things that would definitely factor in, and yet they seem to selectively forget that they ever existed right up until the moment where they themselves are confronted with it.

People dream about going back to medieval times, fighting with swords on a battlefield, riding horses across the countryside, honorably deferring to the nobility, and then completely forget that if they want to take a shit they're going to be lucky to find an outhouse. Not to mention the complete lack of proper toilet-paper.

For this reason alone, there's no doubt in my mind that I'd die for Nagato in a heartbeat.

Not that I'd phrase it like that, mind you. For all that she's somewhat blankly aloof about most things, there are some things that you can't really say to a cute girl's face without feeling supremely awkward about it.

It'd taken her nearly a week to set up everything to give us running water, and even if she hadn't managed to solve the problem of a technically-finite supply of toilet-paper, it wasn't like we'd be truly running low on the stuff anytime within the next couple of years. Unless we tried to decorate a skyscraper with the stuff.

Admittedly, we couldn't actually transport the amount of toilet-paper that'd be necessary for that stockpile to be present at our base, but there was enough of it around that it wasn't a huge effort to pick up some more whenever we needed to do a supply-run.

Unfortunately, more than even the problems with running water and toilet-paper, the thing people wouldn't ever consider about the zombie-apocalypse was that it was boring.

Sure, for a couple of weeks there, everyone had had a couple of mental breakdowns a day, and even now there were still nightmares, but it was just-... Once the base had been secured, once everyone had gotten settled in, once the supply-runs had become carefully scheduled things instead of desperate emergencies, things had just started to... stagnate.

You woke up, you ate breakfast, you checked the perimeter, you checked to see if the base needed some kind of maintenance, you made sure that everyone else were alive and accounted for, and then you had maybe an hour until lunch, and after that?

Nothing. Just... nothing.

Even if the electricity hadn't been a sparse commodity – instead of nonexistent – because of the finite amount of fuel for the generator – Nagato was working on solar panels, but it was very much slow going without anyone left alive to order parts from – then-... There wasn't anything to watch on the television, there wasn't anything to listen to on the radio, and there was no internet to connect a computer to.

So, after having lived in a world where constant external stimulation was par for the course, suddenly there was nothing at all.

Sometimes I'd spend hours just staring at nothing, other times I'd try to pick up some kind of hobby to distract myself with, most of the time I just napped.

Nagato had informed me that the constant napping was oftentimes a symptom of cabin fever, or of depression. I wasn't going to argue about it.

For all that I'd probably lost less than some, feelings weren't really supposed to be reasonable, and there was no doubt that I'd lost something.

It was weird, waking up in the morning without my little sister trying to pile-drive me out of bed. It was weird, to remember holding Nagato back as Asakura climbed the fence on the roof, to watching someone I admire break down so completely as she watched her almost-sister's last goodbye.

I still have nightmares about it, yeah. Of what it would've been like if it'd been me that'd gotten bit instead of her, of what it would've been like if it'd been Nagato instead of her, of what it would've been like if we'd tried to stop her from killing herself. Of watching her smile apologetically and step off the ledge.

At least she'd been kind enough not to scream on the way down.

It was bad enough to have only Nagato's own scream still echoing in my ears.

Regardless, life in the zombie-apocalypse was boring, dull, repetitive, and at this point only sort of distantly traumatic.

You knew you were bored when you started to miss all the emergencies of trying to desperately fight your way through your former classmates as they tried to kill you, or of stumbling into your house and backtracking to your little sister's school once you realized she wasn't there, or of having to go through the already-rotting corpse that'd hours ago been your mother to check.

Traumatized, yes. It was hard to live through the zombie-apocalypse without feeling like someone had chopped off a limb or two. But at least I'd never seen them really die, never seen them turn, never had to listen to their final words before they became something else. Hell, for most of that time, I was very close to delirious from the adrenaline.

Which was probably why I missed it so much.

Koizumi had a theory that people who dealt well in the initial crisis might not be very psychologically suited for dealing with the slow trudge of the aftermath. Generally, I tried to just ignore him, but when you have like eight hours a day to spend staring at a wall, listening to a wannabe-psych-student – with a thing for philosophy – started to sound remarkably entertaining. And... there might be a point in it.

Dealing with the crisis, all you really had to do was focus on the goal and then get to the goal. The goal in this case being safety and shelter. In the aftermath, you almost needed to _avoid_ the laser-focus that'd kept you alive through it, and just... figure out how to live again.

Or you could procrastinate that by taking a hell of a lot of naps and pretending like there was nothing more interesting in life than that. Everyone had some way of coping, and I really wasn't as into books as Nagato was.

Besides, you never knew when you'd have a perimeter-breach in the middle of the night. Best to catch up on sleep before it was too late.

"Kyon!"

Of course, the problem with that was that being asleep meant sticking around in one spot for long enough that you could actually fall asleep, and that made you unfortunately predictable.

"Quit slacking off!"

I'm not slacking off, I'm preemptively redistributing my sleep-pattern for a strategic advantage. Buzz off.

"You've still got homework to do!"

No I don't. I haven't had any homework in ages.

"That's no excuse! They're just trying to lull you into a fall sense of security!"

They're zombies Haruhi. They don't have enough brains left in them to plan something more advanced than putting one foot in front of the other. And that might actually be overestimating them.

There's a scoff. "That's just what they want you to think, Kyon! Academics are vultures! They're biding their time! And then when you least expect it, 'bam'!"

I think you have a very distorted view of the feeding-habits of vultures, Haruhi. And also I think being a zombie takes precedent over being an academic, so I doubt that that logic would apply in any case.

"Dammit Kyon! I'm not gonna have a club-member flunk their entrance exams!"

To what? There's literally nowhere to apply for university anymore. It's the zombie-apocalypse out there, Haruhi.

"That just makes it worse! Who knows what kind of exams they'll think up now that the government has fallen apart and can't enforce their sensible educational decrees anymore?! We need to study harder than ever!"

Ignoring your apparent belief that the government's leash on academia has been all that's keeping them from creating the entrance-exams from hell. In what direction of absurdity are you expecting the zombie-teachers to go in? Like, 'which part of the human body is tastiest'? I don't know about you, but I don't feel like there's much point in trying to study for questions like that.

There's a delightful sound of aggravated frustration from her direction, and then she slams the door. Her footsteps storming away down the corridor.

Ah, blessed silence.

The door slams open again.

"Look at these exams, Kyon! Look at them! These are all from before the educational decrees! They're insane! We need to know this shit now, otherwise we'll flunk!"

Opening my eyes to the blurry view of a paper being held inches away from my face, I can't help but sigh.

It's the end of the world Haruhi, can't we at least skip differential equations?

"No!"

My life sucks.

XXX

"You know, it might simply be Suzumiya-san's way of spending time with you."

Are you trying to give me relationship-advice again Koizumi? Didn't Tsuruya-san ban you from that on pain of keeping Asahina-san all to herself?

Koizumi's amused smile slips into something both pained and sheepishly embarrassed. "Sorry."

Yeah yeah. But you can't help but wonder, because you're secretly really into soaps, and you haven't had your fix since before the DVD-player crapped out on us. I've heard it all before. Dunno why you'd need to look at _my_ relationships though, considering-... you know.

"Ah, well..." Koizumi's smile edges deeper into 'embarrassed'. "Ignoring how soaps are more entertaining to watch than to participate in, part of the charm is the... inconclusiveness, I guess? A 'will they or won't they' kind of feeling. And-..." He coughs, cheeks turning a bit pink. "Tsuruya is very... deliberately open, about things like that."

That part about it being more fun to watch was unnecessary, Koizumi. Though, fair enough. It's hard to imagine drama popping up with you guys.

Mainly because Tsuruya seems to very much be of the opinion that arguments should be solved in bed. Which is really about as much information on the matter as I'm even remotely willing to know about. And I'm eternally grateful for Nagato helping us soundproof the bedrooms to keep my innocence intact.

Or, well... as intact as it can remain after that first night they kept us all awake.

Also, if Tsuruya's lungs are anything to go by, then athletes are creatures to be feared. How Koizumi got out of there with only a slight limp, I'll never know. And I'm grateful for that, even if there's a hint of morbid curiosity in regards to the specifics of the technique.

As for Haruhi bullying me into studying being her way of showing affection? That's kind of a given.

Not in the sense of some kind of weird courting-ritual, because that's-... I mean, it might be possible, but if I was planning on taking up gambling, there are things with better odds and higher payouts than the question of whether what Haruhi feels for me is platonic or not. Like placing bets on the moon actually being made entirely out of cheese.

I guess she might be attracted to me, but with Haruhi it's just as likely to find out that she's in fact exclusively sexually attracted to sandwiches. Hell, I couldn't even blame her for that. Sandwiches are amazing.

Cheese and sandwiches.

God I miss the good-old mass-produced sandwiches.

Koizumi raises an eyebrow at me, and then very deliberately takes a bite out of his sandwich.

That's-... That's not really what I meant, and you know it. Eating Asahina-san's homemade bread is amazing too, but I just-... There's something to be said for the variety of sandwiches that capitalism has raised me to expect from the world. And I haven't had actual cheese in ages.

Koizumi smiles, amused, and focuses back on his sandwich.

It's not like we'll have flour to keep making the stuff indefinitely, even if Nagato figured out a way to create our own yeast. But there's a couple of tons of it just in the neighborhood, so as long as we try to make sure that nothing nasty gets into the stores, we can probably keep making bread for a good long while. And we certainly don't have any cows around, so making dairy-products is something of a distant pipe-dream for the foreseeable future.

No matter what jokes Tsuruya made about finding 'other things' to milk.

I really don't want to know what kind of things those three are into. And I'm sure that Haruhi and Nagato would both agree with me on that one.

XXX

Sleeping whilst sitting up is always the worst feeling.

Making a vague noise of discomfort, I feel something shifting by my shoulder. And yes, opening my eyes, my suspicion is confirmed.

Sorry Nagato.

She doesn't look up from her book. "It's fine."

At least we're sitting on a couch rather than on the floor this time. I knew all that work carrying the damn thing up the stairs wouldn't be for nothing. Though considering the guitars that have been carefully placed aside, I'm guessing that I fell asleep in the middle of things.

Sorry again.

"It's fine." Nagato's expression doesn't change, but I feel like there's a hint of fondness in her voice.

Straightening so that I'm no longer leaning quite so heavily on Nagato's shoulder, I turn my attention to the reason why doing so is a lot more effort than it ought to be.

Looks like my ability to slack off is contagious. Who'd have guessed it.

"There was no point in continuing." Nagato bluntly rejects my teasing, eyes still focused on her book.

Which is fair enough, I suppose. I was the one that wanted to learn after all, Haruhi mostly already knows this stuff. Even if she's godawful at teaching it.

Still, that doesn't really excuse her from being teased over using my as a pillow. And no, me doing it to Nagato isn't the same. Everyone should be well-aware that I'll fall asleep at the drop of a hat at this point, so after sitting down next to me they can only really blame themselves if I fall asleep on them.

Admittedly, that won't stop Haruhi from trying to deflect my teasing, but I've weathered far worse since I picked up napping as a hobby. And let's face it, at this point, that's basically what it is.

Sending a small smile in Nagato's direction, I pinch Haruhi's nose shut.

The faces she makes as she sleepily fails to draw breath is hilarious.

"Bwugah!" She startles forward, nearly bending double from her sitting position.

Good morning, Haruhi.

"Dammit, Kyon!" She rubs her nose. "Quit doing that!"

I make no promises.

Haruhi makes a rude gesture at me, before blinking stupidly at Nagato for a moment. "Ah. Sorry, Yuki-chan."

"It's fine." I'm pretty sure there's an exasperated kind of fondness to her voice as she repeats herself for the third time.

Oh? So you'll use me for my body, but I don't even rate an apology? How cruel.

"Oh please." Haruhi glares at me. "I can see drool-marks on Yuki-chan's shoulder."

What? Really? Oh, crap. Sorry Nagato.

Nagato looks up from her book for the first time, meeting my eyes. "It's fine." Then she turns back to her book.

There's a short awkward silence as I try not to think too hard on how badly Nagato used to startle whenever someone's mouth ended up in close proximity to her. It's an understandable kind of phobia, considering everything, and she's gotten a lot better at it, but-... yeah. Poking at it, accidentally or not, very much rates an apology.

And now Haruhi has the moral high-ground. Dammit.

At least I didn't snuggle up close enough to crush her ribs.

Haruhi's face turns a bit pink. "Shut up, Kyon!"

Hmm... Sure, fine. I feel like I need to sleep in a better position for a little bit anyway.

Haruhi's embarrassed pink slips into a much more irritated kind of color. "Oh come on! You just woke up!"

What can I say? Sleep beckons me oh so sweetly with its irresistible siren-song.

Haruhi makes a disgusted face at me, and opens her mouth to berate me-

"Supply-trip." Nagato speaks up.

Ah. Yeah. I guess it's about time for another one of those.

Haruhi deflates. "Fine fine." She pushes herself to her feet, distractedly readjusting the way her clothes have twisted in her sleep.

It's weird how the end of the world will change your priorities in life. Once, that kind of display would've made me actually react. Either by looking away, or by looking way too much. Now it's more like an absent acknowledgment that it happened with an added distant certainty that Haruhi is still very much on the pretty side of things.

It's hard to be reserved about things like dressing and undressing after being stuck next to each other during a great many failures to fully account for the necessity of a change of clothes. Sure, I'm pretty certain that kind of apathy would go out the window if Haruhi decided to pull off a striptease or something, but as long as it's just... 'practical' then it's really just nudity, and there are a lot of things more important than what people decide to wear. Even if the clothes – twisted from sleep as they are in this case – leave very little to the imagination.

Pushing to my feet once she moves aside enough that I don't end up knocking into her, I reach out with a hand for Nagato. For all that she doesn't need any help getting up, I'm still kind of in apology-mode, and treating Nagato like a noble lady isn't really that hard.

She tilts her head slightly, considering the hand for a moment, before accepting it.

Keeping the worried frown off my face at the lack of weight that I'd already known to compensate for, I shift a bit to make sure I don't end up crowding her as she gets to her feet. She really needs to eat more, but I suppose the same can be said for most of us at this point, and there really isn't any point in bringing attention to it.

So we're running low on...?

"Pads." Haruhi shrugs. "Other than that... shampoo, maybe?"

Oh, please no. Not shampoo. Anything but us running out of shampoo. We spent like four hours last time trying to track down something fitting your ridiculous standards. Can't you at least use it up at the rate of like a bottle-a-year?

"Shut up!" Haruhi smacks my shoulder, face red. "I don't want to hear that from someone who spent two hours trying to figure out which pillow was softer!"

It was important!

"Toothpaste, winter clothes, and food." Nagato interrupts our argument, tone as placid as usual.

Which... yeah, food is obvious, and our current supply of toothpaste probably wouldn't last until our next scheduled supply-run, but winter clothes? It's not even close to autumn yet.

Nagato nods. "Easy to store, unknown weather-forecasts."

Ah. Makes sense. Better to have them and not need them for a long while, than to have winter sneak up on us without clothes to survive the cold.

We'd have to check with the rest of them too, and make a proper list, but it was always good to have some idea of where we'd be going so that we could start planning out a route from the get-go. After all, zombies had a tendency to congregate in certain areas, and other areas had been very-deliberately locked down during our previous outings, so... it paid to be prepared.

And Nagato actually brought up an interesting point with the weather. Who knew if the zombies would end up somehow impacting the climate? Humans certainly had, and without humans around... who knew what'd happen?

Hopefully we wouldn't have the ice-caps melting – likely causing our base to flood – or a new ice age arrive – making our attempts at gardening even more makeshift than they already were – though those two extremes were probably pretty unlikely. Either way, it'd be weird to have a winter without my little sister running around excited by the snow.

XXX

Whilst the roads themselves are still in perfect repair, trying to use a car to traverse them was always going to be a bit of a gamble.

Cars had crashed into the buildings lining the road, cars had crashed into trees and light-posts, cars had crashed into each other. Buses were even worse, and more than a few wide roads had ended up becoming dead-ends of twisted metal and glass. So planning a route was more than simply looking at an old map and keeping the track of the road-signs, and that wasn't even going into the areas where the zombies gathered.

Koizumi had a few theories about why they gathered in certain spots, and so far he hadn't really been proven wrong on the subject. Mainly, it was a mixture of being drawn to loud noises and movement, and seemingly not being very fond of direct sunlight or rain.

If there was a sheltered area with glass shattered across the floor? A zombie might enter, only for the crunching of the glass underneath their feet to echo in a way that drew the attention of its fellows, and then there'd be more of them to crunch the glass underfoot, drawing in even more zombies.

It was part of the reason why our base ended up being in a building that was separated from its neighbors, with a decent amount of open ground in between them. Not that that really stopped them from wandering around the grounds, but it meant that they were less likely to snowball into a horde, which wasn't really something anyone wanted to try dealing with.

It'd still been a pain in the ass to board up all of the windows on the lower floor. Not to make them 'safe for living in' so much as because it would discourage the zombies from actually entering – which would've negated the point of having a 'moat' of unpleasant sunlight to keep them at bay. Nobody would've felt remotely safe living on the ground floor, and the true places of fortification were the stairs.

Still, with the roads being what they were – and with fuel being a very obviously limited resource for the generator – it stood to reason that we had to walk. Sure, there was a wheelbarrow that had very much come in handy, but mainly it always came down to a good backpack or a duffel-bag.

Which was why Asahina was nearly always assigned to hold down the fort instead. This time Koizumi would be with her, because Tsuruya was feeling pent-in and Koizumi was feeling a bit tired. And honestly that was pretty much the norm at this point.

Apparently, for all that Koizumi ended up exhausted and Asahina content, Tsuruya got jittery after sex.

Admittedly, I would've been perfectly alright with never learning of this, but it was hard to deny that you knew something when it kept smacking you in the face. Though I suppose that's my own fault for paying any sort of attention to the three of them in the first place.

Toady on the list of supplies were: toothpaste, food, shampoo, winter-clothes, paints, a new board-game, and sleeping-bags designed for winter.

Personally, I was also looking for a blanket and a fluffier pillow, but that wasn't something that we'd be going out of our way to pick up. Just like we wouldn't go out of our way to look for things to turn into solar panels today. Didn't mean we wouldn't pick something up if we stumbled across it, simply that we wouldn't really be looking for it.

The new board-game would've been on that list of low-priority too, except... nobody wanted another monopoly-game.

Really, whoever designed that game must've had a streak of sadism wide enough to encompass half the solar-system. No matter what Nagato had to say about the supposed political reasons behind its creation – starting out with uneven amounts of money was _obviously_ going to be unfair, so creating a game entirely based around making that all-the-more-obvious wasn't really a good excuse for the sadism involved in it.

So Koizumi would have his new board-game, even if it meant we'd have to extend the trip for a bit. It wasn't like we hadn't done it before for reasons that'd been a lot less immediate – or dire.

In fact, it was all-in-all a very ordinary kind of supply-run. Not in the sense of 'why did it have to go wrong this time', but more in the sense of 'I'm not playing goddamn I-Spy with you ever again'. Which, as a somewhat-related aside, was because Haruhi was either cheating or both blatantly colorblind and stubbornly illiterate. Possibly both.

Still, everyone had to keep themselves entertained somehow, and it was a pretty long walk. Normally this could be solved by being the kind of person who likes to take long introspective walks in silent contemplation of the wonders of the world. But with the zombie-apocalypse being a very much ongoing kind of problem, being lost with your head in the clouds was a good way to not come back alive.

Constant vigilance, carefully following the pre-plotted path, and trying to keep from making enough noise to really begin attracting zombies.

Honestly, as long as we didn't try for a marching band – or get into screaming-contests – the zombies wouldn't really start tracking us down. There'd be a few handfuls lingering close enough to the path to notice us, but nothing more than that.

With I-Spy eliminated because Haruhi couldn't be trusted not to be a cheating menace... and because Tsuruya used Korean to spell all of hers And that Nagato was a hopeless science-geek who – despite most of the time being bluntly uncaring about how obvious what she 'saw' was – would end up seeing things like 'chlorophyll' instead of 'tree'. Which had probably been the main-cause for Haruhi's desperate insistence on finding the perfect shampoo, come to think of it, what with that one time she'd seen 'dandruff'. And then I'd always end up in trouble for insisting on seeing metaphysical things like 'boredom' and 'my ruined future career as a street-performer'.

... Anyway, with I-Spy eliminated because Haruhi couldn't be trusted not to be a cheating menace, other games were quickly suggested.

And, on behalf of the zombie-apocalypse, the game became – as always – a contest of how many zombies we could eliminate. Or how extravagantly we could eliminate them? Honestly, with Haruhi and Tsuruya bouncing ideas off of each other, there was no real point in trying to keep up with their logic.

Inevitably, Nagato would somehow manage to perfectly fulfill the criteria of 'highest score' in a way that made Haruhi whine about rematches and Tsuruya laugh herself sick. Leaving me as the unofficially designated look-out, only present to make sure that nothing snuck up on us whilst Haruhi got tunnel-vision on obtaining victory.

It was a thankless job, but someone had to do it, and Nagato couldn't be expected to do everything on her own.

XXX

Despite what anime would have you believe, guns are about as common in Japan as actual invasions by Godzilla. Okay, maybe a bit more common. But not by a lot.

So, whilst there were probably half-a-dozen different reasons for avoiding using firearms in the middle of the zombie-apocalypse, the main reason for not doing so was simply that there weren't any around to be used.

The reason why none of us had even really tried finding any was a mix of things. They made a _lot_ of noise that the zombies would be attracted to, depending on the caliber it was hard to say how effective they'd actually be at blowing a zombie's brains out, the ammunition was a blatantly finite resource that'd never get replenished, none of us had training in using guns, and none of us knew anything about the necessary steps of gun-maintenance. Just to name a few of the problems.

All in all, a sturdy shovel with sharpened edges was a much more efficient kind of weapon in the middle of the zombie-apocalypse.

Unfortunately, that also meant that we were required to actually swing a shovel around with violent intent for long periods of time. And though it'd done some interesting things to everyone's arms and general fitness-levels, it was still very much a pain in the ass.

It also wasn't helped any by the fact that the closest thing to a getaway-vehicle that we had was a wheelbarrow. A wheelbarrow that was an unfortunate result of Japan's discriminatory views of women being physically weaker than men, thus meaning that its design was rather too awkwardly cumbersome for a teenage girl to use comfortably, which as a result landed me with the unfavorable position of wheelbarrow-chauffeur.

The exact thing you wanted to do after exhausting yourself beating in the heads of zombies with a shovel, was to load up a wheelbarrow with various bits-and-bobs and then drive it halfway across town.

It was kind of a shame that I was generally feeling too lackluster to bother with eating as much as I ought to – especially considering the exercise – otherwise I'd probably have some amazing arms by now.

Still, there were worse reasons to not eat a lot. Like horrible trauma, actually not having any food on the table, or losing your appetite because of some kind of psychological illness-... Actually, what with how textbook my supposed depression-symptoms were, my faulty eating-habits might technically classify as that last one.

Regardless, driving around a wheelbarrow is a pain in the ass. But there were always ways to lighten your mood, even in the darkest of hours.

So okay, I might still have enough of a sex-drive to be willing to pay extra-attention to some of the things that a person actually _could_ buy with rather ridiculous ease in Japan – as long as they knew where to look.

"Oi, what are you stopping for, Kyon?!" Haruhi puts her hands on her hips, glaring at me.

I had a vision from god.

"What the hell's that supposed to mean?!"

I've become religious, because the gods have provided me with a solution to all my problems in life.

Haruhi makes a doubtful noise, a slightly disgusted – but mostly annoyed – sneer on her face. And then actually turns to look at what I'd spotted.

"Kyon." Her voice is really flat. "I will shove that thing up your ass."

Harsh. But I'd really expect nothing less from you.

Tsuruya notices what Haruhi noticed, and starts laughing. Silently – thankfully for our somewhat zombie-precarious position – but with enough force to nearly force her to her knees.

Nagato finally pulls her attention away from our surroundings for a moment, and ends up raising a critical eyebrow at me in response. Apparently, she doesn't approve of my sense of humor. Oh, the pain.

Suppressing the urge to blush at being silently scolded by Nagato, I pick it up anyway. If nothing else, the plastic it's made of looks hard enough to hurt someone without injuring them if you lobbed it at their heads.

So even if actually getting Haruhi to wear it would solve a lot of my problems – mainly her continued insistence to wake me up by screeching in my ear about studying – it'll still fulfill some minor usefulness in being used as a projectile against her enthusiasm. Also, even if Nagato disagrees, it's still funny.

Look, see, Tsuruya is laughing herself sick at it. Obviously it's funny.

Haruhi continues to glare at me for a while, before turning around with a huff. "Let's just go already, you perv."

Which is unfair and needlessly judgmental. Picking up a ball-gag doesn't make me a perv. It makes me a practical kind of person who's willing to improvise.

Tsuruya wobbles, and finally falls to her knees wheezing. Her face is inches away from the floor, and by this point, she sounds like she might actually be in physical pain.

And don't think I've forgotten who decided that they needed three bags worth of batteries for 'private reasons'.

"It was a long-term investment!" Haruhi glares at me, blushing. "Shut up!"

Tsuruya hiccups oddly, and I think I might've heard a half-whispered 'mercy' somewhere in there. Clearly, someone's enjoying themselves.

XXX

"Soundproofing works both ways, you know." Koizumi comments with the smile of a man who can't help himself from trying to be funny.

And whilst I'm sure that keeps you safe from Haruhi's snoring, I don't see how it's in any way relevant.

"Well, you wouldn't have to worry about us." His smile doesn't waver a bit. "Even if she doesn't wear it."

Koizumi, that's quitters talk. Also, I think you've massively misunderstood the whole point of having a ball-gag. And please don't make this a sex-talk, I don't want to risk losing what little respect for you I have left.

There's something that might've been a huff of amusement. "Fine fine. Ruin my fun."

The non-Monopoly game we finally settled on is unfortunately a trivia-competition, because Haruhi has an obsession about studying all things. It wouldn't really have been too bad of a boardgame, except for... well, Haruhi has an obsession about studying all things.

And she disagrees with the answer-key, more often than not.

So, until Haruhi either gives up on finding the book that proves that the answer to the 'distance to the sun'-question is not only misinformed and simplified, but also deliberately deceitful. Or Haruhi finds proof that she was the one misinformed on the subject – from a source that she won't reject like she did the last couple of dozen ones she's found so far. We're not going to be playing that game anymore.

Yay. Extra nap-time.

Well, no. With Haruhi on a crusade like this, it's best to attach yourself to someone else that she's not quite so willing to bully into helping her. And Nagato has already 'joined' her with a good book that has literally nothing to do with anything coming out of Haruhi's mouth, so she's kind of unavailable.

There's no way that Haruhi wouldn't suspiciously inspect whatever book _I_ decided to read, even if she'd foolishly believe Nagato to be on her side.

Which was why I was playing 'go fish' with Koizumi. Again.

And he was winning. Again.

The bastard could bluff like nobody's business.

XXX

Blinking awake to the ceiling of what had once been more of a storage-cupboard than a proper classroom, I'm forced to face the truth of the world's cruelties.

I'm awake before Haruhi is, because she just sleepily buried her elbow into my kidney with enough force to bruise.

This kind of shit is why Nagato is supposed to be in between us. Haruhi seems to be subconsciously unable to actually do more to Nagato than hug her tightly enough to give the girl a bit of a hard time to breathe. And she only does that if she's startled somehow or in the middle of having a nightmare.

Shoving Haruhi's arm aside to keep her from trying to repeat her earlier success in waking me, I sit up to check where the hell my Haruhi-buffer has disappeared to. It's a cruel world where Nagato's brilliance has come to be exploited in this undignified manner, but I'm not sacrificing the precious few moments when Haruhi isn't yelling about me sleeping by actually being _awake_ during them.

Nagato is sitting by the window, face perfectly blank as she stares out at the far-too-early morning drizzle.

It's kind of humbling sometimes. The way her calm expression makes her look like some kind of goddess of tranquility.

For all that her face is showing signs of her not eating as well as she ought to, and that her hair could probably do with a professional trim, and the way her pajamas are both adorable and too large on her small frame... she really is breathtakingly beautiful.

Haruhi twitches and suddenly contorts, her knee impacting my thigh hard enough to make me flinch.

Part of me really wishes I could instinctively demand vengeance and shove an elbow into _her_ ribs in retaliation. However, for all that she's not here anymore, it's hard not to equate violent wake-up calls with my little sister.

It's annoying, but having Haruhi wake me up at ungodly hours by elbowing my in the kidney is actually kind of nostalgic.

Still, Haruhi's movement draws Nagato's attention back into the room.

And really Nagato, it's way too early to up and about. If you're gone, who'll defend me from Haruhi's sadistic sleep-fu?

Nagato blinks at me for a long moment, before nodding slightly and rising to her feet.

Originally we'd been sleeping in sleeping-bags, but... well, nobody really knew how to clean those, and after a while they'd really started to smell. So, even if it was really awkward at the best of times, we'd ended up sleeping on futons with a whole lot of regular blankets instead.

Which meant that Haruhi hadn't so much rolled on top of Nagato's sleeping-bag, as she'd rolled onto her side of things. Which made it fairly easy to muscle Haruhi aside enough for Nagato to slip back underneath the blankets.

Her feet are cold, and her heartbeat is still uneven from whatever nightmare that probably forced her awake in the first place.

The raindrops are periodically smattering against the window, and Haruhi's breathing is evening out now that she can't attack anyone.

Nagato's bony shoulder pushes against my equally bony ribs.

Snow would've fit her image better.

It's a lot prettier to look at.

XXX

You know, in hindsight I probably really only have myself to blame for this.

Myself, and Murphy... and the weather.

And Haruhi. There's never a situation that can't somehow be blamed on Haruhi, as long as you were willing to dedicate some time and effort to figuring out the convoluted train-of-thought that'd lead to blaming her for it.

In this case, blaming Haruhi is mainly in the sense that she didn't manage to immediately convince me to stubbornly refuse coming along on this particular supply-trip. Not that she really tried to convince me either way, but that's the beauty of blaming Haruhi for things. She's generally to blame for _something_ going wrong, even if you haven't found out about it yet, so blaming her preemptively for random stuff is perfectly acceptable.

Still, I find myself endlessly grateful for Nagato pushing us to collect winter clothes last month.

Seriously, there's definitely something messed up going on with the weather. Then again, all this snow covering literally everything could be partially explained by a general lack of car-traffic and the heat that those thing tends to generate. It doesn't necessarily have to mean that a new ice age has arrived and we're forever doomed to either suffer hypothermia or starve to death.

I mean, I wouldn't be all too quick with disregarding the possibility of that, but it's not the only explanation. Which is a relief.

Not enough of a relief that I'm feeling happy about being the one stuck pushing along the wheelbarrow that's been modified with all of the skill of a book-smart high school student – with little-to-no practical knowledge about snow – to be almost a sleigh.

I say almost, because we really just removed the wheel and duct-taped a plank on it.

And as the designated driver, I'm feeling every square inch of cut-corners in our shoddy construction. Turns out, there's a reason that wooden skis are like, covered in wax or whatever. Also a reason why nobody's stupid enough to try duct-taping their feet to the skis, even if 'the sticky side' doesn't actually touch the snow. It's duct-tape. In the eyes of the snow, it's _all_ sticky sides.

"Suck it up, Kyon!" Haruhi encourages me with her usual gentleness.

And when I collapse from exhaustion, I'll make sure to land on top of you.

At least I don't have to be the one keeping an eye on the surroundings this time. Koizumi came along with us to help ease Nagato's burden of competence. Not that he's of _much_ help, as this fantastically shitty wheelbarrow-sleigh can attest to. But at least he's not challenging Haruhi to games that give her tunnel-vision.

I send a brief prayer towards Asahina and her daunting task to keep the base standing in the face of Tsuruya's boredom. From previous times, I know better than to assume that the distraction would be of the 'horizontal' variant, and... well, Tsuruya can be as bad as Haruhi sometimes.

"Do try to warn me beforehand if you would?" Koizumi speaks up, sounding vaguely amused, despite how he ought to be just as out of breath as I am. "Asahina-san asked me to take photos."

Gakh. More compromising photos for Asahina's photo-albums. Really, if she wasn't so horrifically bad at lying and kindhearted to a fault, I would be very worried about the purpose behind gathering all of that blackmail-ready material.

As is, it mostly just reminds me that Asahina thinks that it's really cute how Haruhi and I keep falling asleep on Nagato in new and interesting ways.

I can see what Koizumi sees in her. Their interests are disturbingly well-aligned.

XXX

The early snowfall kind of screws up a lot of our plans for the immediate future.

Asahina, having been in charge of the greenhouse and its adjacent field, is now rearranging the plants to keep them from getting frost-damaged. Koizumi is helping her out, both by carrying the plants around and shoveling snow, and by clearing up a plant-storage area that will keep them reasonable safe from the winter chill. And Tsuruya is currently refusing to leave their bed without at least four layers of clothing.

As for Haruhi, she's stalking me with more dedication than ever. Trying to herd me away from colder areas, in case I decide to take a nap somewhere and get hypothermia for my trouble. Apparently, arguing that I'm not stupid enough to freeze to death in my sleep when I can take a nap in front of one of the few radiators available, isn't at all convincing.

I'd be offended if it didn't mean that Haruhi is a little less prone to ambushing me with 'homework' whenever she thinks I'm slacking off, if only because she doesn't want me running off to somewhere cold. Winter-time is surprisingly relaxing in that sense.

As for Nagato and myself? Well, she's trying to calculate the amount of fuel we're going to need for the generator, now that she can somewhat-measure how well our base keeps in heat. Which leaves me with the more menial tasks of that very important job.

Somebody needs to wander around the entire base with a thermometer after all. Not to mention helping out with some of Nagato's more makeshift of insulation attempts. Such as covering the walls – and in certain cases windows – in blankets.

Considering our height-difference, my aid is somewhat invaluable, for all that it's menial.

So far, it doesn't seem like heating is really going to be much of an issue, even if a lot of rooms are going to end up pretty damn chilly. All calculations seem to imply us lasting at least to the coming summer with our current fuel-supply, even if it'd end up getting a lot colder outside before spring finally shows up.

All in all, despite our preparations and worries, winter is more an expected inconvenience than a real threat. And as long as nobody went and slipped on ice and broke their leg, that'd remain true.

Hell, even if somebody _did_ break their leg, we had at least three people who had some knowledge about setting bones. Oh, if the break was bad then it'd probably be quicker and less painful to figure out how to amputate it instead, even considering our complete lack of pain-killers. But at least we had something ready in case of a medical emergency – that wasn't related to zombie-bites.

Our official stance on medical emergencies involving zombie-bites? Asakura had kind of set the bar for that one.

There wasn't a lot else you could do when there was no cure.

XXX

For once, I'm not the one stuck with the manual labor.

Not that I don't understand why Koizumi ended up in that position this time around.

"Ah, you spilled some." Asahina reached for his hand-...

Oi, you two. Quit flirting over the food.

"Unhygienic." Nagato agrees, not glancing up from her most recent book.

Haruhi keeps unusually silent about my interruption, proving that she too agrees, as she'll usually vocally disagree with anything coming out of my mouth on sheer principle. Tsuruya just starts cackling, probably thinking about something 'truly unhygienic' that the three of them could be doing instead.

After all this time living in proximity to each other, you kind of start getting a feel for her different versions of laughter.

Asahina winces guiltily, face turning red. Koizumi's face is red too, but he's mostly pretending that he didn't hear her attempted interruption in the first place, neatly sidestepping having to react to the rest of the conversation.

I mean, normally I don't mind if the two of them decide to flirt whilst cooking. For all that it's sickingly sweet, it's not a horrible contrast to being bored out of my mind. But Koizumi is very much using his bare hands at this point.

I don't care how pretty Asahina-san is, I'm really not interested in getting 'indirect kisses' from her.

Haruhi shoves an elbow into my ribs, and Tsuruya overbalances and crashes to the floor again, laughing too hard to seemingly care too much about that. Nagato absently reaches over and pinches the back of the hand that I'm not using to fend off Haruhi's violent tendencies.

"Crude." Nagato explains her reasoning for siding with Haruhi this time around.

Which... fair enough. I probably didn't need to say that last bit out loud. No matter how truthful.

Asahina is hiding her face behind her hands, blushing red all the way to the tip of her ears. And for all that Koizumi is chuckling quietly to himself, his blush has started making its way into 'glowing' territory.

You'd think they wouldn't be so prone to this kind of 'blushing newlyweds' feeling, what with the two of them dating Tsuruya. It's actually vaguely impressive that they've managed to preserve their ability to ever become embarrassed, let alone their ability to blush.

I mean, I haven't blushed since the fourth time I accidentally walked in on Haruhi using up her 'emergency batteries'. Exposure to someone as blunt as Tsuruya should've at least stopped their blushing from being such a frequent thing, right?

An arm wraps itself around my neck as Haruhi calls out an embarrassed battle-cry, proving that apparently I said that last bit out loud again. Damn.

Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Nagato hiding her face entirely behind her book, likely pretending not to smile to prevent Haruhi from switching targets, because she certainly isn't hiding a blush.

Making sure to not fall on top of Koizumi or the somewhat-messy food that he's still busy preparing, I instead selflessly overbalance in a different direction from Haruhi's brutal assault.

There's a brief yelp of surprise from a little bit too close to my ear, and then I hit the floor. With Haruhi on top of me. Oomph.

Tsuruya is still laughing, easily audible even over Haruhi's embarrassed outrage, and my new angle proves that Nagato is indeed hiding a tiny exasperated smile behind her book.

There are worse ways to spend a winter afternoon.

XXX

For all that it was something, it really wasn't that amazing of a view.

With the rooftop shaped the way it was, entrance and water-tower and inert AC-units all, you could only really look in one direction at a time. Unless you wanted to try climbing the water-tower, which was attached to a ladder that looked like it'd been in ill-repair a couple of years before the zombies came into the picture. Also, the top got really windy, and there wasn't anything to hold on to.

So, despite it being a rooftop, it was more like an awkward balcony with a lot of clear air above it. Nice for star-gazing, not so useful for being a vantage-point, for all that it wasn't impossible to move around enough to bypass the obstacles to whichever view you wanted to see.

Not that there really wasn't a lot to 'gaze out' over. A few distant trees blocked most of the view one way, and another way was filled with so many boring suburban houses that they only served to remind you that the pre-zombie-apocalypse world definitely had its own issues. The third view was a mixture of both trees and suburb, and the fourth was a distant glimpse of downtown.

Obviously, if it was a simple matter of aesthetics, the fourth view was the only one remotely close to being worth climbing all those stairs to look at it.

Not that there wasn't a softened and almost serene edge to the suburb now that it was completely covered in mostly-undisturbed snow. Most zombies avoided direct sunlight and direct rain, it stood to reason that they hadn't been all that fond of snowfall either. And, thanks to nobody actually clearing the roads after the unusually large snowfall, the zombies were basically all snowed-in now. So they weren't around to ruin the view either.

Still, that kind of snow-... I had a lot of memories of my little sister playing in the snow, during those brief moments when it stuck around for long enough to do something with it. And without the zombies stumbling around the streets in a mockery of human traffic, it was a little bit too easy to imagine her playing in the backyard of one of the houses.

It was easier to appreciate the view that didn't hurt.

Downtown looked weird all covered in snow and without lights. Not as honestly disturbing as it would've looked if there'd actually been light coming from in there somewhere – because everyone in town were supposed to be dead, and the electricity hadn't worked for months – but the kind of weird that comes from unlearning a year-long habit.

There was a kind of deadly grace to the way the snow clung to the skyscrapers, rather than the seeming sleepy comfort of the suburb. It'd probably look even more haunting in clear moonlight, but that'd mean staying up at the unheated rooftop in the middle of winter during a clear-skied night.

If I ever wanted to see it that desperately, I'm sure I could convince Haruhi that it'd make an excellent opportunity to work at photo-composition for when the 'Academics' popped out of the woodwork and started demanding ridiculously long essays on art or something. She'd probably be able to make it look more breathtaking in a photo than I'd be able to with my eyes, so that'd be a bonus.

No, watching the sunset was where I drew the line in trying to freeze myself to death.

With Haruhi halfway draped over me and Nagato more or less in my lap, in order to comfortably wrap the extra blanket around us all, it wasn't like I was in any risk of falling asleep. Even if it was a mostly-comfortable kind of arrangement.

Honestly, the main thing ensuring my wakefulness was the cup of tea that Asahina had pressed into my hands, and the knowledge that if my sleepiness really was infectious, then Haruhi would likely end up spilling boiling hot water down my back.

Spilling tea over my hands was enough of a deterrent all on its own, thank you very much.

Haruhi twitched, eyes widening slightly as she stared out towards the sunset, and I turned my attention back to the view. No matter how utterly dull it might turn out being, it _was_ what we were here to see.

What had once been a white expanse of snow, lost nearly all of its light, until it was a pale gray on black underneath the suddenly blazing orange of the setting sun.

"Colorful." Nagato breathed, shifting slightly, her head leaning back into me a little more as she took in the sky.

It was strange, that color had somehow ended up being such a rare thing in our lives. It wasn't like any one of us had made an effort to get rid of colorful things or anything, it was just-... Despite everything, it wasn't like it was rare to come across color. But our lighting kind of sucked, and what colors we surrounded ourselves with tended more towards comfort than fantastical.

It was... nice, to be reminded that colors existed.

"You're both complete saps." Haruhi muttered as she snuggled in a little closer. "I bet I can make fireworks that are _tons_ more colorful."

... I seriously hope you're referring to 'tons' in the metaphorical way, Haruhi.

Haruhi remains noticeably silent.

Haruhi? Dammit Haruhi! Don't you dare make anything like that! Ignoring how definitely dangerous that sounds, who do you think would get stuck hauling that shit?!

Nagato twitches oddly, her shoulders shaking silently as she pretends that she's definitely not listening to us bicker.

Haruhi just grins and continues to sip at her tea, clearly enjoying herself.

It's not until half-an-hour later, with the sun having set and Haruhi's evil grin not having faded in the slightest, that I realized that she was teasing me. But by then I've spent enough thought-power on arguing against massive firework-displays, that simply leaving it to drop by the wayside would be really frustrating.

Still, it does neatly explain why Nagato had been so willing to silently laugh at me trying to explain to Haruhi that the sheer logistics of creating a literal ton of fireworks was insane. And why Haruhi kept waving off all of my arguments with haughty sniffs and declarations that I just didn't understand the power of having a vision, seeing as I was a lowly peon.

In hindsight, I really should've clued in a lot quicker than I did.

But the tea was warm, and the sky had been bright, and Nagato's breath came out in startled little gasps of air as she tried to contain her silent laughter, and no matter how evil the expression on Haruhi's face, her eyes had been so unabashedly happy.

And really, what more could you ask for in life?

XXX

 **A/n: I think this is like the third or fourth draft to a Gakkou Gurashi crossover (I still haven't managed to finish that anime yet, but that's never stopped me before). Unfortunately, all the other ones were depressing as hell, so I dropped them like a hot potato.**

 **If you're gonna write post-apocalyptic, you should write happy and hopeful. Otherwise it's just miserable all over.**

 **Also, I ended up doing some serious research into chocolate for this fic. Research that was never used beyond accepting that I couldn't use it. So that was fun.**


End file.
